Herd of Cats was both quick and wise to parley with the Sage of Wind, one of the 4 great spiritual elders to the Gersen Kobold Klan. After betraying his own people to the heroes, and expositioning a fair dump truck of plot, Kertlekrep, once called great one, was allowed to leave the dungeon, his loyalist in tow.

But now what? According to Gwendolyn the gnome the five children managed to escape, but have become lost in the dungeon, and one them, Jurin Threed no less, is held captive by a shadowy beast of evil and flame! And the remaining childrem, as well as Gwen’s surviving friend, are to be put to death, in a grisly sacrifice to empower the kobold king!

Tense.

So the Herd of cats traveled northward eventually defeating the locked door in their pass, they encountered a chamber containing a large metal cauldron, suspended over a dark pit by chains and pulleys. Standing guard over this makeshift elevator was a retinue of kobolds, slingers and skirmishers, led by a Black Scale Hunter. Essentially the ninjas of kobold culture.

i know you scared

The fight had the potential for greatness, but a fat monk getting stuck the cauldron, a poisonous snake in someone’s armor and an extremely modest de-loinclothed kobold slinger contributed to the most embarrassing kobold fight I have ever seen (and that says A LOT). Routed, the Kobold ninja, and accomplices, fled down the elevator shaft to warn their people of encroaching adventurers.

Heading northeast, they encountered a series of narrow tunnels choked with a black ash that made both visibility and movement extremely difficult. So difficult in fact that an overweight dwarf had to make several acrobatics skill checks to squeeze through. There they found a chamber containing this ghastly sight:

"Hi HO Hi HO, into my chain you go!"

the entrance to the room was also guarded by this beauty:

did someone say scooby snacks?

This fight had a little 4e spice thrown into it, and man was it good. The party avoided a complete napalm disaster when Fizzleslicky summoned a celestial badger to distract the hell hound, who was about to fill the narrow, hero packed tunnels, with lava breath. Snickersnack the badger was dead, and the hell hound hiked a leg on the smoldering blue ashes, melting the floor a little.

All the while the chain wrapped, undead dwarf continued to hammer away at a glowing metal link, a link possibly sealing the soul of young Jurin Threed, into the beast’s chain forever. Kevalis clanked forth to taunt and do battle with the hell hound, while Zazzamook shifted around for the flank. F’hal set loose a burst of holy energy, healing the party and damaging the Dead Smith. His hammering abated, the undead began to survey the room with its dead eyes. Sophie, concealed in darkness took her shot burying an arrow into the creature’s writhing chains, and drawing its ire.

The hell hound then loosed its fiery plasma breath on more than half of the party, all of whom avoided the full force of the blast. The Dark Smith moved towards Sophie, leisurely tossing its hammer and catching it, slowly, until it was upon her. With a resonating crunch the hammer blow came and Sophie’s left knee was shattered. Bone splintered and blood spouted as Sophie lay prone at the creature’s chain wrapped feet. It raised its hammer for the killing blow…

Fizzleslicky summoned a fiendish hawk which flew into the face of the Dark Smith, while Kevalis strode forward to engage both the Smith and his Hound at once. Seizing the opportunity, Zazzamook, shifted over to the anvil and grabbed the burning chain with both hands, ignoring the scalding burns from the chain and summoning every once of strength available (and I mean every once) the monk broke the half-forged link in twain. A dull pulse was emitted from the sundered link, which stunned the Dark Smith where he stood, dropping him to his knees.

The hell hound turned on Zazzamook delivering two deadly bites and dropping the nearly dead monk to the cavern floor. Kevalis began bashing and stabbing into the beast taking advantage of its weakened state. Sophie stood shakily on her broken leg took careful aim and fired over and over again into the Dark Smith’s stunned face. With a shudder his head collapsed in like a rotten pumpkin and his physical form melted away. All that remained were his hammer and his chain. The hell hound, its master slain, returned to its plane of origin.

In this episode, 2 new gameplay rules were introduced. The first was X-treme critical hits and fumbles. The X you see, makes it that much more extreme. Under this system, a critical is still a critical, however if you roll again to confirm, it becomes an X-tream critical hit. These often only further increase the damage being dealt, but they can also be quite nasty, and quite deadly. A critical fumble is triggered by a natural 1, followed by a second roll that would be a failure. A lot of extra rolling to be sure, but ultimately a lot more exciting and interesting for combat.

The second gameplay element introduced was the minor action. Taking a leaf out of the 4e tome, i assigned each member of the party a personalized minor action, to keep things interesting, and to alleviate guilt that i was mashing 4e and pathfinder monster stat blocks together.

The fighter now taunts, aka, marks as a 4e fighter would.

The ranger can “aim” at targets granting cumulative tokens (thank you iron heroes)

The monk can now shift 1 square as a minor action

The cleric can Bless another, granting a +1 to the next die roll of any one ally with 5 square burst, or +2 if the ally is adjacent.

and the summoner can grant his eidolon a +1 to attack or def for one round

I figure that 2 more minor actions can be added in, at levels 10 and 20 respectively, to further spice things up, in the meantime i feel that it give the low-level characters a little bit more to think about in combat than the standard move and hit, hit and move equation.

Tonight’s session was delayed, and only consisted of one encounter, one very big, very bad, very crazy encounter.

hostage situation, negotiating with kobold terrorists?

The group had encountered kobolds before, but the fights had been very one-sided. The kobolds surrendered and begged for their pitiful lives, which the players thought was pretty funny. This fight was different. They stumbled into this encounter only to find a female gnome caster being accosted by a mix of 12 kobolds, minions, skirmishers, and slingers. Only marginally concerned for her safety they waded into battle, and what a battle it was.

gnome damsel in distress. copywrite blizzard.

The encounter was loaded up with minions, and thanks to a complete lack of AoE attacks the minions were able to swarm the heaviest hitting dps and drop him in the first round. (The gnome summoner’s eidolon.) In subsequent rounds the kobolds managed to subdue both the gnome summoner and the female gnome and tactically retreat, free shift by free shift, back towards their lair. McFightar, the party tank, got to flex his new armor and was literally a tank in this battle. Even the two lucky blows that were landed on him were deflected by his shield.

F’hal, the party cleric, managed a longe range heal on the gnome summomer as he was being dragged away, which brought him back to conciousness. At this point the gnome summoned a back up monster while feigning death, and the beast he summoned proceeded to assassinate most of his kobold captors. Ah yes… the hell viper, a 19 stealth balanced by a max damage output of 1. wait… minions only have 1 hitpoint… dammit

haHA!

The session ended with the heroes and the Kobold shaman facing off across the seemingly prone body of the gnome summoner, possibly getting ready to negotiate, or possibly planning more bloodshed.

As a side note, this is a picture of how ridiculous a human looks wearing dwarven armor: